In the 1993 film “The Fugitive”, actor Tommy Lee Jones famously related the following quote: “[o]ur fugitive has been on the run for 90 minutes. Average foot speed over uneven ground, barring injuries, is 4 miles-an-hour. That gives us a radius of six miles. What I want out of each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area. Checkpoints go up at fifteen miles.” Whether the data quoted by Mr. Jones is accurate or not, it is generally well known that in the event of a prison escape, a robbery, a child abduction, a person reported missing, etc., time is very critical. The more time a person has to get away, the larger the search area becomes. As the search area grows, the price and cost of the search increases exponentially.
During the summer of 2015, two men escaped from an upstate New York Prison. Initially, search dogs, helicopters, and hundreds of police officer and corrections officers searched the wilderness and local communities, going house to house in neighborhoods. Two days after the fugitives escaped, the State of New York offered a $100,000 reward for information that lead to the fugitives capture. One week into the search, the 16-square-mile search area produced no results. It is reported that over 1,000 police officers, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents, and United States Marshalls assisted in the 23-day search. It is further reported that the manhunt cost the state approximately $23 million dollars.